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You hear stories from time-to-time of exasperated owners who give up on their team in July or August; they start planning for next year by making trades for keepers, or just tossing guys out there, to see who bites. Maybe you even know a couple of these guys. Maybe you ARE one of these guys.
Hi, my name is Scott, and I am one of “those guys”.
In a perfect world, we all drafted “Good Teams” in March. We all say to ourselves“Well, that guy shouldn’t’ve grabbed so-and-so, but I’m glad I got you-know-who” and so on and so forth. I thought I had picked a GREAT team.
But I drafted a bad team. And I knew it in May as I watched my team slowly slide down the rankings.
I had a couple strategies for drafting my team. I’m in a deep mixed keeper league. I kept 4 guys: Miguel Cabrera in the 1st, Victor Martinez in the 3rd, Aaron Harang in the 10th, and James Shields in the 26th. I decided that part of my strategy would be to punt saves, and just grab a bunch of low-whip/low-era starting pitchers, plus a couple reliable middle relievers. Couple that with strong hitters, and I’d be in good shape.
Everyone of my strategies failed.
They say you can’t win the league in the 1st 2 rounds, but you can lose it. When the draft order came in for our league, I banged my head against the wall. If I hadn’t kept Cabrera, I would’ve had the first overall pick in the draft. I would’ve gotten Chase Utley, or David Wright. Instead, I had Cabrera, and watched the snake draft work back to me; I ended up with Mark Texeira in the 2nd round, who I figured would complement my Cabrera/V-Mart combo just fine. Runs, RBI’S, Total Bases and OBP? Done. Solid. Perfect. No problems.
And then V-mart ran into issues. And then Miguel and the Detroit line-up faltered. And then Tex waited until June to warm up (again).
I drafted 13 starting pitchers, on my 27 player team. I grabbed Dice-K, who I thought with Shields and Harang, would be the 3 guys I could throw out, almost every time, and not have to worry too much. But Shields had a rough start, Dice-K got beat up in his match against Oakland in Japan, and Harang… Well, Harang’s had issues. The other 9 pitchers were a nightmare. Dustin McGowan Gil Meche, Ian Snell, Matt Garza, Ubaldo Jimenez... one-by-one, I dropped them. Jair Jurrjens worked out pretty well, but losing Garza was a mistake. I dropped him after a couple bad starts, and then he warmed up. And I see Ubaldo got his control back. Thanks, buddy.
Ah, the inconsistency of pitchers.
By the middle of June, I knew I had to start making trades. My hitting was about average, but my pitching was in the gutters. Then, one of the other owners announced a fire-sale. He was giving up, too. He made some trades for next year, so I tried to make a couple with him for this year, but couldn’t get anywhere.
At that point, I started making offers left and right. More pitching, more hitting, whatever it took. I managed to get my hands on Ryan Doumit, but that wasn’t enough to stop my team from sinking to 11th place.
It’s difficult giving up on your team. This is a cash league, which makes it all the more heart-breaking. It’s my 2nd year playing fantasy baseball, and as much as I tried to draft a better team than in 2007, nothing worked out the way it should’ve. In retrospect, Keeping Miguel and V-Mart in the 1st and 3rd kicked me to the ground. Punting saves stomped my face into the dirt. Below-average hitting, plus weak ERA and WHiP doomed me to failure.
So, I’ve traded off parts of my team, so that I have options next year. Ryan Doumit (in the 22nd), Joakim Soria (in the 13th), Aubrey Huff (in the 18th), and maybe even Lance Berkman (in the 3rd) are all potential keepers for me. I don’t like giving up, I’m far too competitive for that. And while the trades have been flowing back and forth this year (compared to last season) in my league, nothing I’ve done has made a difference for this year. I have to be realistic, as should we all. Someone’s going to win, and someone’s going to lose. This year, I didn’t draft the team necessary to win. C’est la vie.
The silver lining to all this, is that my weekly H2H league, that I started for fun? I’m in 1st place, and have been almost all year.
It figures.
Tags: Our Blogs Lenny M. ODE TO SCOTT
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I have nothing against the guy Lenny, but he flat takes away from your show. You have votes on all sorts of things...put a poll up about limiting Tony's comments to the written word.